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One Lap of the Web: Every girl's crazy for a sharp-dressed Citroën

February 20, 2014

It was a dark and stormy night. The Citroën was broken. Photo by Antti Kautonen

-- Fiat industrialist Gianni Agnelli was the man who put postwar Italy on inexpensive wheels, and himself in expensive clothes -- and became an icon in the process. Well, he was Italian. No surprise there -- some stereotypes are true for a reason. "When the money is lost and the records broken," writes Rich Cohen, "Only style remains -- a handful of gestures that recall a life or an era." If Agnelli was one of the most stylish men of the 20th century, as Cohen claims, then the stuff he pulled off -- skinny ties worn disheveled, Fratello watches over his cuffs, hiking boots with his suits -- seemed to be an accident, but were intended with the utmost design. "Everything was wrong," suggests Cohen, "and everything was right."-- "The maximum speed thing is dead," writes Tim Watson at RideApart. For bikes, anyway: Motorcycle manufacturers have grown weary of trying to see at what single mph increase you can liquefy yourself. What's going to be exciting anymore? Safety like ABS? Traction control? Probably not, but well-handling motorcycles are always going to tantalize the sort of people who love to bench race. Plus, 200 hp is nothing to sneer at. -- Underneath that pile of junk in your garage could be treasure! That's what your crazy Uncle Larry has been telling you for years, ever since your parents first started dragging you to his house. But that's what Thomas Shaughnessy found in a nondescript garage in Thousand Oaks, Calif. Chassis P/1067 was the last Ford GT40 built in 1966, a MkI chassis with a rare MkII rear end, one of three built. The owner, a retired firefighter, bought the car in 1975 (for practically pennies back then, we lament) and tried to restore it, but sidelined it because of health problems. For 30 years. Tons of pictures over at The Gentlemen Racer. -- There's nothing subtle about large comedians, and there's nothing subtle about Excaliburs. It might not be a surprise, then, that Jackie Gleason owned a custom 1974 Excalibur SS Phaeton Series II in lemon twist yellow and black with body-matching two-tone interior and a custom cane overlay. It has four horns, four seats, six lights, six pipes, a 454-cid V8 (producing a leisurely 275 hp that was probably even slower with Mr. Gleason behind the wheel), and Daytons on all six white walls. It's up for auction, and bidding starts at a cool $50-75,000. One of these days, Alice. Bang! Zoom! Straight to the Pep Boys accessories catalog circa 1974! -- In Finland -- and congrats to them for beating the Russians, again -- our friend Antti is the prime minister of Beaterland, a sovereign nation of misfits and '90s nostalgia whose passport doubles as a repair manual. The latest presidential ride for this head of state, as documented over at Hooniverse, is a 1997 Citroën Xantia wagon, a cool European wagon with a manual that we Yanks love to envy. Practical, it suggests. Practical and progressive, like the European nation of Beaterland itself: the Xantia rode on a hydropneumatic suspension that's been a Citroën trademark since the DS. Antti paid 800 Euros for it. The previous owner blew through 3,000 fixing up the suspension spheres. What a sucker. He should be sent to the Beaterland gulag, where prisoners spend all day toiling in the rust repair mines.

Blake Z. Rong
- Associate editor Blake Z. Rong has been with Autoweek since 2012 as an Associate Editor in Los Angeles. He drove his Mazda Miata across the country and believes that no man needs a car any larger or faster. Well, ok, faster, certainly.
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